Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre LotiA very strange book. Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was a French naval officer who on his duty tours around the world had several romantic experiences he wrote up into popular novels, first about an affair in Istanbul (Aziyadé, 1879), then in Tahiti (Le marriage de Loti, 1880). In 1887 he decided on the plan to write a similar book about Japan, a country which was then in the news. He had heard about the sham marriages that other Western temporary male visitors concluded in that country, and as soon as he arrived in Nagasaki he contacted a (rather unctuous) Japanese middleman whose name he got via the grapevine to arrange things for him. Soon after that he starts living with his 17-year old "wife" in a house high on one of the many steep slopes of Nagasaki...
The point is that this was all true (only the name of the "wife" was not O-Kiku (Chrysanthemum) as in the novel, but Kane) - Loti lived for about a month (from 8 July to mid September 1885) with the young woman and kept a diary which he used as the basis for his novel. That is of course also the reason that Madame Chrysentheme does not read like a real novel - there is no plot, it is indeed a diary.
The strange thing is of course that Loti was not at all in love with O-Kiku (in contrast to the women he met in Istanbul and Tahiti) and even openly writes that he disliked her. His lack of empathy and arrogance towards O-Kiku are the largest blot on the book. Of course his experience in Nagasaki was not a spontaneous love affair, and O-Kiku was not an ordinary girl - she was a prostitute (the daughter of a single-mother geisha) and she did this solely for the money, with the acknowledgement of her family. So it is not surprising that no sparks were flying (Loti even contemplates a premature "divorce") - but the hypocrisy is all on his side. In France he would never have gotten away with this - although his novel became very popular...
Loti remains on the outside, not only of Japan, but also of O-Kiku. He has no interest in her, and just regards her as a doll and a plaything with no inner life - he never lets her speak in her own voice. By the way, I believe that from her side, she is also not interested in Loti and sees the fake marriage as just a financial transaction - when he is leaving he doesn't find her in tears, but catches her counting the money she has earned while singing a song!).
The only interesting parts of the book are those which are supposedly close to the diary and describe excursions in Nagasaki, its downtown shopping streets, its high hills and its many temples - that is, as long as Loti focuses on what he sees around him, for he can give good descriptions, and doesn't write about O-Kiku, because then his paternalizing attitude towards her again gives me a bad taste in the mouth.
Some things that struck me:
- The seriousness of the Japanese authorities, where even this sham affair has to be played by the book and according to detailed rules.
- The practicality of the Japanese authorities in condoning this sham practice, because it offered a way to control the behavior of foreigners (the Nagasaki authorities also provided prostitutes to the small Dutch contingent on Dejima).
- There are also glaring mistakes: Loti thinks that a noren, a normal shop curtain hung out to indicate a shop or restaurant is open, somehow was connected with funerals. It is also strange that O-Kiku has a Buddha statue in the room where she lives with Loti - Buddha statues were never regarded as art objects by Japanese (as Westerners did), and belonged in temples, not in private homes (I think it was bought by Loti himself, who sent 16 boxes with antiquities back to France).
But the worst thing is - as mentioned above - Loti's arrogant and colonial attitude towards Japanese culture, and the Japanese - most of all O-Kiku. It is only 5 years later that Lafcadio Hearn arrived in Japan, and there is a world of difference with playboy Loti in the respectful way Hearn writes about Japanese culture - he concluded a real marriage with a Japanese wife (a daughter of a samurai family) which lasted until his death.
It is of course strange that this cynical novel so devoid of love, became the basis for Puccini's love opera Madame Butterfly! The reason is that a tragic, romantic story (another instance of Japonisme) by the American writer John Luther Long (which was indeed called "Madame Butterfly") came in between Loti and Puccini and formed the real basis for the opera.
See for more on Lafcadio Hearn: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/20...